His Guardian Medic
by Vickerooni
Summary: Kakashi had been assigned a mission with a very critical window; either hit it, or suffer consequences. One man throws a monkey wrench in his plans, causing him to fail to hit the window, and injure him in a way that Sakura isn't sure she can cure. She's never seen this poison before. Suspense, angst, and romance. Quick drabbly one-shot of my favorite pair, KakaSaku.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: Hey all! Vickerooni here. I know the KakaSaku fandom has been a little relaxed as of late, most likely due to the ending of Naruto (*tears*) and the fact that Kishi made very clear what his canon shippings were. But fret not! My KxS fire is only burning brighter than ever! And a little canon is not gonna stop us from writing what we want, right? ;) **

**Anyway, here portrayed are Kakashi and Sakura – Kakashi's in a bit of a bind and Sakura encounters something she has never seen before. A bit angsty, a bit romantic, but mostly suspenseful. Read on the find out what happens to our favorite copy nin and his faithful medic! It is supposed to feel choppy and quick, by the way – if you feel that way, it was definitely intended.**

…

Kakashi lay motionless under the deathly still trees, muscles locked. Moonlight glinted off the hitae ai half-buried in the dirt inches from his splayed, bloodied fingers.

The silence only worsened the agony within.


	2. Chapter 2

She sprinted at top speed, the exhaustion in her muscles red-lining as her lungs screamed raggedly in frantic depletedness. Liquid metal spewed from her bottom lip, deep teeth marks slicing the tender skin.

The mission Kakashi had assigned himself bore a time limit, one of brevity and importance; if he missed the window, even slightly, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Sakura's retrieval team had been called forward more as a safety net and less as a necessary component of this mission. Receiving the command that they were to locate and recover him came as an immeasurable shock to the pink-haired medic, but she obeyed nonetheless, ordering her own comrades to floor it. One minute could count for the loss or recovery of a life.

Kakashi had clipped the window, and not on the better side.

Sakura and her team flew through the tree branches, soundless and swift. The blood in her mouth and lack of air in her lungs only propelled her faster.


	3. Chapter 3

Upon spying a few tufts of silver hair, Sakura honed in on him, throwing herself to the ground at his side, skinning her knees. The pain barely registered.

Shizune and the two accompanying team nin created an anxious half circle behind her, obediently awaiting further orders.

Sakura's eyes roamed every inch of Kakashi's body in mere seconds, a preliminary exterior examination. Blood coated his hands, but didn't appear to be his, as there wasn't a single cut on his body. His hitae ai lay beside one hand and a senbon lay in the other. She knew immediately that it was the enemy's; Kakashi never dabbled in senbon use and wouldn't suddenly start now_. But then what purpose does this serve? _she thought rapidly.

Leaving the senbon alone for the moment, she called on her chakra and executed the interior analysis. Her mouth went dry.

"Sakura," Shizune barked insistently. "Tell me what needs to happen here."

"I-I don't know," Sakura growled. Her green chakra-encased hands glowed furiously, streaking over Kakashi's abdomen, neck, and head. The crucial life signs were dim, but he wasn't gone, not yet. To keep him in the realm of the living, she had to work fast, faster than she ever had before, even when Kankuro was brought, badly poisoned, to her operating table. She would have already begun the tug of war with death over Kakashi, but there was just one thing:

"I've never seen this before."

Shizune knelt on the other side of Kakashi to do a quick examination of her own. Her brow furrowed and a deep frown warped her lips as her hands glided effortlessly over him.

"Shizune, I…" Sakura's teeth ground together hard as hot tears pooled, rushing over her cheeks. "I don't know what to do!"

With an angry hand, she wiped her face and pounced on the senbon, hoping desperately that it would provide an answer.

If it had been expertly aimed and stuck, there were only a handful of areas she could think of that someone with a senbon dipped in a combative agent would go for. Easily she found the tiny red dot marring his neck, creating a doorway into the main vein there.

Suddenly the tears were gone and she reclaimed a professional air about her, her brain racing through countless possibilities. Her experiences with simple poisons were numerous; she could heal those affected by them in her sleep. Finding herself unprepared for what Kakashi was affected by created a barrier difficult to overcome as time slid by.

She dissected the senbon and ran through the list of Kakashi's symptoms in her head again. Her brain kicked into gear and it took her mere seconds to imagine the scenario in her head: the agent, introduced into the bloodstream via the soaked tip of the senbon, spread quickly through his veins. It dispersed in his muscles, peppering them so lightly but thoroughly that it was virtually no longer detectable, and began locking them down, rendering him unable to move at all. It didn't stop there, though; the unrelenting force of this mystery drug further circulated into his organs to begin the same process that had completed in his muscles, and they were shutting down fast. She had minutes, maybe, before the drug finished its third and final cycle.

"It's a paralyzing agent," she told Shizune finally. "A new advanced type that not only negates muscular function, but kills as well. We need to keep his heart beating and draw the agent out of his body in order to stop it from completing its full cycle. If we can stabilize him, we can bring him back to Konoha and draw out the remainder of the agent to create an antidote."

While she had been reporting on her findings, she herself began to work at hunting down and siphoning out the paralyzing agent. The other team members crowded around his body and started diligently working away, creating delicate chakra bubbles with their hands and delving them into Kakashi's abdomen, drawing out a sickly green colored liquid and dropping it into a bowl.

Even as the four of them strained through the painfully intricate process of drawing out the agent, Kakashi's face showed no reaction. Sakura continued to monitor his fading pulse as the sweat beaded and fell from her forehead. What nerves she had that the war left intact were being frazzled and plucked at.

Gently, after she knew no one was paying attention to her, she squeezed his fingers and under her breath murmured, "hold on, Scarecrow."


	4. Chapter 4

Suddenly the hair on the back of her neck prickled and in a flash she sprang up, burying two sharp-tipped kunai into the trunk of a tree nearby.

A man circled the wounded tree, appearing out from behind it with a smirk on his unfamiliar face.

"That was close," he remarked, tossing something into the air before catching it again. "You almost made me drop this." He held the thing up to the light between his forefinger and thumb, shaking the tiny glass bottle so that the liquid inside swished gently.

Sakura warily readied two more kunai between her fingers, poised again to strike, making a barrier of her body in front of Kakashi and her teammates. None of them even glanced up; they continued working dutifully, uninterrupted.

"Easy, easy. I'm here to make you a deal, if you'll allow me to explain."

The clothes he wore screamed nin, but none of them identified him; his hitae ai was nowhere to be found. The fabric covering his shoulder was split raggedly, revealing a red gash.

Despite Sakura's defensive stance, he continued taking small steps toward her.

"Come any closer," she growled, "and I will bury you deep in the earth before you can even think to scream."

"Okay then," he replied smoothly, holding his arms up and taking a step back. He tipped his head in Kakashi's direction. "But you're not going to save him in time if you don't let me speak."

"Then speak and be on your way," she hissed. She hadn't the time or patience to deal with roaming nin.

"I have the antidote," he said, again holding up the little bottle. "Just a few drops of this and he'd be right as rain in no time."

Sakura's eyes widened before her face set in a snarl.

_The gash…the foreign blood on Kakashi's hand…the senbon…the antidote?!_

"_You _poisoned him," she spat, and with a war cry, launched the kunai at him. He dodged them effortlessly and regarded her with a condescending look.

"You're still not listening to me. Yes, I did that to him, but I have the antidote right here! And I will give it to you, if you satisfy my one, tiny request." He paused and grinned at her. She waited for him to continue, her eyes piercing his skull.

"I want his eye."


	5. Chapter 5

"My client, whom this man of yours so effortlessly murdered, made me his avenger of sorts, and so I pursued Hatake Kakashi through the woods where we fought and I won. I would have taken his eye myself, but you showed up much faster than I anticipated, and Hatake was resilient to fall to the toxin. I know that your efforts here are futile and that you need this antidote or else he will die anyway. I invented the toxin, after all."

"Why do you want his eye?" Sakura barked.

"I deserve some sort of payment for my service, don't you think? And besides, sharingans fetch a beautiful price on the market these days."

Sakura lunged at him, filling her fists with chakra. He evaded her first two punches, but was too slow for the third; it landed right in his gut, slamming him back into a tree fifty feet away. Branches and leaves rained down on him.

He withdrew three senbon from his pack and cast them at Sakura, but she remained a blur in her anger-fueled vigor. Sprinting up into the branches, she sprang off and sailed down at him, wrenching his pack from his belt and sending a fist into his face so hard his body packed down into the dirt. He wasn't dead, but not by much; he'd remain unconscious for a long, long time.

"Didn't I warn you?" she hissed quietly. As she approached Kakashi's body, she rifled through the man's pack and located the bottle he'd quickly tucked away before she attacked.

"How is he?" she asked Shizune as the woman looked up at her. Her face gave nothing away.

"He's still fading fast. Should we risk using that man's antidote?"

Sakura sighed and studied the liquid with intense eyes.

"It could be fake, but we can't test it here. Besides, we don't have time. We have to risk it," she said. Falling to her knees, she uncapped the bottle to find a needle at the head of it. Without hesitation she injected it at the site where the agent was introduced and prayed for it to work.


	6. Chapter 6

"We've done all we can here," Shizune said hurriedly. "If the antidote doesn't work and there is more to be done, it has to be at the hospital."

Sakura nodded and the four of them packed up their supplies.

"Renui, go ahead with Shizune and alert the hospital of our arrival. Takada will stay with me and I will carry Kakashi back," Sakura ordered. She remained steadfast under Shizune's concerned gaze. "I have enough chakra to get back to the village with Kakashi. Go."

Shizune nodded and disappeared into the trees with Renui. Takada helped to gently situate Kakashi on Sakura's shoulders in a fireman's carry. He was much bigger than her, and even with her normal strength it would be a painful and sluggish journey back, but with her chakra infused muscles she would fare fine.

Sakura took one glance back at Takada before they were sprinting full tilt toward Konoha.

To Sakura it seemed to take longer coming back than it had going to find him; she chalked it up to the fact that she was worried every breath she heard Kakashi wheeze out would be his last. It may have been wishful thinking, but she thought she could hear his pulse grown stronger, feel the throb of blood pumping faster through his veins, and she clung to that idea, whether fabricated or true.

Her entire body was screaming when they crashed through the doors of the hospital, and Sakura knew Takada had been keeping a close watch on her squad leader as they launched themselves through the woods.

Shizune appeared immediately and without a word escorted them to a room prepared for Kakashi. A few medics Sakura had gotten to know in the past months of working alongside in the hospital and in the field were awaiting orders on the other side of the cot.

Sakura, Shizune, and the two others from their team hefted Kakashi down and onto the cot as quickly and kindly as they could, minding his head. Sakura inhaled deep and threw her hair up into a messy bun before she and the rest of the room crowded around the unconscious man.

Hands glowing, consistent but weak, she examined his internal and external status once again. Her heart slammed against her ribcage in the uncertainty hovering around the outcome of the antidote. With a soft exhale she lowered her hands to her sides and noticed with a furrowed brow that her movements were unnaturally stiff.

"He's stabilized – the antidote worked. Now it would be prudent of us to scan every inch of his bloodstream for any remaining traces of the agent," she managed to say, despite that her jaw seemed to be working against her. It resisted her desire to shape sounds and only grew worse as she tried harder.

Takada's concerned eyes peered at her, growing wide as Sakura attempted with frustration to swivel her head and look at the girl.

"S-sakura, you've got some blood…" she said, trailing off as she motioned toward her neck, just behind the ear.

Sakura swiped two fingers over the area and came away with rigid jerks, discovering specks of blood on her fingertips.

She made to form a curse with her lips, but it never left her mouth.


	7. Chapter 7

There was no way to tell how much time had passed. Sakura awoke blearily to find herself on a cot in another room; a face hovering at her bedside gradually grew from fuzzy to discernible.

"That man must have hit you with another toxin-laced senbon. We were able to create our own antidote from the traces of toxin we collected from Kakashi's body and managed to heal you without much trouble. The mission and the toxin did a number on your body, so the doctor's orders are to stay and rest for a little while longer," the face said, morphing into one Sakura recognized as Shizune's. Sakura's conscious spell didn't last long, though, when she quickly began to fade back into blissfully numbing sleep. Before she slipped past the barrier again, she caught three of the sweetest words she had ever heard.

"Oh, and Sakura? Kakashi is alive."


	8. Chapter 8

Sakura surfaced again some time later to find yet another visitor at her bedside, but this one had an aura so familiar she almost considered it equal to her own. A pure, gratifying grin melted on her face as her head lolled to drink in the sight of him.

Her left hand was lazily cupped in his, while his other was busy cradling the precious orange-bound book he always carried with him, which fell to his lap when her stirrings caught his attention. Their eyes locked, sharing more than words could fathom in a single gaze, and he gave her an eye-crinkling smile before he brought her hand up to his cloth-covered mouth, kissing the gold band resting on her ring finger.

Tears formed and slid down her cheeks as her lower lip began to wobble.

Her smile never faltered.

…

**A/n: Awwww!**

**This was meant to be suspenseful and a bit fluffy. Hope you enjoyed!**

**With love,**

**V**


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